The History of England Volume IV: Revolution by Peter Ackroyd

I was really excited about this book since it cover the 'long eighteenth century', which is my favourite era of British history, and I really loved Peter Ackroyd's other non-fiction books I had read. Ackroyd is really great at seeing the big picture, but in this case, he jumps over things too fast. Some parts were executed brilliantly, capturing the mood of the age through fiction, accounts and art, such as the part about the gin addiction of 18th-century London and the role of music of all sorts. But some parts are just so dull and badly organised and hastily broken off, unexplained. The parts about military and political machinations especially were overcrowded, introducing too many names all at the same time, then never mentioning them again. There is also an overindulgence is statistics. I really admired Ackroyd's ability to not 'take sides', even though he seems to be fairly critical and slightly mocking of everyone (except for his literary and artistic heroes like Hogarth and Johnson), he doesn't seem to be attempting to present a version of history pushing through any political agenda. I also appreciated the theme of 'bubbles' running through the book, in terms of financial schemes, empty political machinations, scientific experiments, and industrial discoveries. But I suppose I prefer history being told differently, through details of one particular place or life, some of my favourites, like Wedgwood, who I think is just brilliant, got quite short-changed. I found it hard to concentrate on military and political accounts, rather like reading a text book. I feel like Ackroyd didn't really know who his audience are or how much they know. I already knew a lot of the things that were in this book, and the things I didn't know weren't presenting in an engaging enough way for me to be that interested. Overall, I was disappointed.